DNA Gatherers Hit a Snag: The Tribes Don't Trust Them

By AMY HARMON

Published: December 10, 2006

CORRECTION APPENDED

The National Geographic Society's multimillion-dollar research project to collect DNA from indigenous groups around the world in the hopes of reconstructing humanity's ancient migrations has come to a standstill on its home turf in North America.

Billed as the ''moon shot of anthropology,'' the Genographic Project intends to collect 100,000 indigenous DNA samples. But for four months, the project has been on hold here as it scrambles to address questions raised by a group that oversees research involving Alaska natives.

At issue is whether scientists who need DNA from aboriginal populations to fashion a window on the past are underselling the risks to present-day donors. Geographic origin stories told by DNA can clash with long-held beliefs, threatening a world view some indigenous leaders see as vital to preserving their culture.

They argue that genetic ancestry information could also jeopardize land rights and other benefits that are based on the notion that their people have lived in a place since the beginning of time.

''What if it turns out you're really Siberian and then, oops, your health care is gone?'' said Dr. David Barrett, a co-chairman of the Alaska Area Institutional Review Board, which is sponsored by the Indian Health Service, a federal agency. ''Did anyone explain that to them?''

Such situations have not come up, and officials with the Genographic Project discount them as unlikely. Spencer Wells, the population geneticist who directs the project, says it is paternalistic to imply that indigenous groups need to be kept from the knowledge that genetics might offer.

''I don't think humans at their core are ostriches,'' Dr. Wells said. ''Everyone has an interest in where they came from, and indigenous people have more of an interest in their ancestry because it is so important to them.''

But indigenous leaders point to centuries of broken promises to explain why they believe their fears are not far-fetched. Scientific evidence that American Indians or other aboriginal groups came from elsewhere, they say, could undermine their moral basis for sovereignty and chip away at their collective legal claims.

''It's a benefit to science, probably,'' said Dr. Mic LaRoque, the Alaska board's other co-chairman and a member of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa Tribe of North Dakota. ''But I'm not convinced it's a benefit to the tribes.''

The pursuit of indigenous DNA is driven by a desire to shed light on questions for which the archeological evidence is scant. How did descendants of the hunter-gatherers who first left humanity's birthplace in east Africa some 65,000 years ago come to inhabit every corner of the Earth? What routes did they take? Who got where, and when?

As early humans split off in different directions, distinct mutations accumulated in the DNA of each population. Like bread crumbs, these genetic markers, passed on intact for millennia, can reveal the trail of the original pioneers. All non-Africans share a mutation that arose in the ancestors of the first people to leave the continent, for instance. But the descendants of those who headed north and lingered in the Middle East carry a different marker from those who went southeast toward Asia.

Most of the world's six billion people, however, are too far removed from wherever their ancestors originally put down roots to be useful to population geneticists. The Genographic Project is focusing on DNA from people still living in their ancestral homelands because they provide the crucial geographic link between genetic markers found today and routes traveled long ago.

In its first 18 months, the project's scientists have had considerable success, persuading more than 18,000 people in off-the-grid places like the east African island of Pemba and the Tibesti Mountains of Chad to donate their DNA. When the North American team arrived in southwestern Alaska, they found volunteers offering cheek swabs and family histories for all sorts of reasons.

The council members of the Native Village of Georgetown, for instance, thought the project could bolster a sense of cultural pride.

Glenn Fredericks, president of the Georgetown tribe, was eager for proof of an ancient unity between his people and American Indians elsewhere that might create greater political power. ''They practice the same stuff, the lower-48 natives, as we do,'' Mr. Fredericks said. ''Did we exchange people? It would be good to know.''

Others said the test would finally force an acknowledgment that they were here first, undermining those who see the government as having ''given'' them their land.

Still others were interested in the mechanics of migration: ''Were the lands all combined? Did they get here by boat?'' For many nonindigenous Americans who feel disconnected from their roots, the project has also struck a chord: nearly 150,000 have scraped cells from their cheek and sent them to the society with $100 to learn what scientists know so far about how and where their individual forebears lived beyond the mists of prehistory.

Correction: December 21, 2006, Thursday
A front-page article on Dec. 10 about the National Geographic Society's project to collect DNA from indigenous groups referred incorrectly to financing for a similar proposal in the 1990s, the Human Genome Diversity Project. Although several federal agencies provided money for planning the project and determining its feasibility, the project itself never received federal funds. Federal financing was not withdrawn.